Sublet NYC Furnished Apartments NYC for rent

A sublet is a situation where the current tenant of an apartment finds a third party to take over the remainder of his or her lease term.

e.g. Susan lives in a great one bedroom rental apartment on the Upper East Side of NYC and is 3 months into her 12 month lease.  A company in Chicago makes her an offer that is too good to turn down. Instead of breaking her lease and paying the landlord several months of rent as a penalty, she can offer to find her landlord a suitable tenant to take over the remaining 9 months of the lease on her apartment. Susan saves several months rent in penalties, the landlord gets a suitable tenant to step in for Susan and the new tenant gets an apartment without any broker fees and is not locked into a 12 month apartment lease. Everyone wins!

Easy as that sounds, finding a suitable tenant for an apartment Sublet NYC is not an easy task by any means for the current tenant nor the prospective one. Susan would have to post the Sublet NYC apartment for rent on Craigslist or one of many newer websites, show her apartment, pass along suitable leads to the landlord who then has to go through the standard lease application process.

If you are going to use craigslist, check under the CL >new york >manhattan >all housing >sublets & temporary section.

There are gems in there. If you have the time, patience and eye for what’s real vs what’s not, you should be able to find something that meets your needs. Be warned, you will need to weed through headlines like this to find that needle in a haystack (actual Craigslist post title taken 12/28/2013!). Rule of thumb – if it’s too good to be true, it likely is.

Sublet NYC Craigslist headline

No one is going to rent you a full sized furnished one bedroom (600 square foot and up) for $2,200 in Gramercy Park if the going rate is $3,200. There’s always a catch ranging from an outright scam where they take your deposit and disappear to a simple bait and switch i.e. you call them and they say, we no longer have this but we do have one for $3,200 or it will turn out the 1 bedroom is really a studio.

There are 2 key ways to protect yourself against Sublet scams.

1) Make sure the sublet is approved by the landlord in writing and the current tenant is not overdue on his payments. This one step eliminates most of the scams out there. It is not unheard of for someone to rent an apartment on airbnb for a weekend and hold an open house collecting deposits and application fees before fleeing. Make sure you verify who the landlord is and then get his permission in writing. Don’t be lazy and skip this step. It can cost you a lot of money and time.

2) Don’t pay rent in advance. Why? because you the tenant will have no leverage if you need something fixed or rectified and the original tenant landlord is not performing his contractual duties.

That brings us to brokers. The tenant can also hire a broker typically at her expense to find someone to sublet her New York apartment. Hiring a broker is generally cheaper than paying lease breakage fees. It also saves the tenant a lot of time putting ads on Craigslist, fielding calls, showing the apartment, co-ordinating with the landlord.

The prospective tenant looking for Sublets NYC has to comb through Craigslist or alternatives with the usual bait and switch noise, scams and annoyances (see above) or find the apartment for rent via a broker.

You must be wondering how does any of this help me find a Furnished Apartment in NYC? Simple. As you can see, Susan is really motivated to Sublet her apartment. She would love for a a qualified tenant like you with a great job, income and references to sublet the apartment from her. As the clock ticks for her to find a tenant, she will be very motivated to offer concessions out of her pocket (a month free, $1000 cash etc). Hence, you as a prospective tenant looking for furnished apartments NYC have to act quickly when you find a furnished Sublet NYC you like.

Negotiate a deal..know that the tenant will be much more motivated to deal if there are a few days for her to move. A good broker working for you should be able to do the same.

Contact Us below if you are interested in hiring  us to find you an apartment Sublet NYC or just know more about the process.